Cubans will take to the polls on March 26 to vote for the country’s unicameral National Assembly, in line with the country’s five-year election cycle. Elections are tightly controlled by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), the country’s only party, and rarely beget political change. Voters will be presented with a single candidate for each of the 474 seats: half of the candidates are put forward by civic groups allied with the PCC, including labor unions and students’ associations. The other half of candidates will be proposed by municipal assemblies, the elections of which are the only polls that offer voters a choice of more than one candidate. However, campaigning for municipal assembly seats is banned and opposition candidates routinely face pressure from the government. The final list of National Assembly candidates will ultimately be determined by the PCC-controlled National Candidature Commission. Those who receive more than 50 percent of the valid votes cast are deemed elected. The National Assembly, a rubber-stamp legislature in practice, in turn chooses the nation’s president and vice president.

Political rights are not on the ballot in Cuba: A lack of fundamental freedoms was one of many grievances that sparked nationwide antigovernment protests in July 2021, the largest in the country since the 1959 revolution. The state’s frequent repression of political dissent and tightly controlled electoral context preclude voters’ ability to alter the nation’s political landscape. However, the March election will be the first since 1976 in which neither former president Fidel Castro nor his brother, former PCC first secretary Raúl Castro Ruz, are involved.

Cuba’s one-party communist state outlaws political pluralism, bans independent media, suppresses dissent, and severely restricts basic civil liberties. The government continues to dominate the economy despite recent reforms that permit some private sector activity. The regime’s undemocratic character has not changed despite a generational transition in political leadership between 2018 and 2021 that included the introduction of a new constitution.

 

Freedom House has identified the following as key digital interference issues to watch ahead of election day: 

• Internet shutdowns: Restricting connectivity during times of political upheaval has become a go-to tactic for the Cuban government to quell dissent. Internet shutdowns bar residents from accessing reliable voting information, engaging in political discourse, or mobilizing during the election. Selective connectivity restrictions—those targeting the mobile and fixed-line connections of specific dissidents—have routinely enabled Cuban officials to silence individual voices. Widespread disruptions were most recently imposed by the government during July 2021 demonstrations and in the aftermath of an earlier historic protest in November 2020.
• Website and social media blocks: Cuban authorities routinely block a host of independent news websites and occasionally block social media platforms during politically tense periods, which could inhibit residents from accessing independent commentary about the election, criticism of the government, and information about voting. In addition to restricting connectivity in response to the July 2021 protests, authorities temporarily blocked WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal; these blocks, and the long-standing ones affecting news sites, severed the protest movement from its connections to independent news outlets and Cubans based abroad, who had rallied support for the demonstrations on international social media platforms.
• Information manipulation: The government manipulates the online information landscape to maintain the dominance of progovernment news outlets and narratives and to discredit independent sources of information. Many actors within Cuba, including government agencies, employ coordinated networks that spread disinformation, amplify progovernment content, and troll dissenting voices on social media. State efforts to manipulate the online information landscape could further prevent residents from finding independent commentary on the vote, muddy public discourse in favor of the current government, and limit voters’ access to reliable reporting or guidance about the elections. Such tactics have featured in past elections: the Cuban Democratic Directorate, a Miami-based nongovernmental organization, found that dozens of automated “bot” accounts had posted progovernment messages on Twitter during the 2018 parliamentary and provincial election period. 
• Arrests and prosecutions: Online activity is subject to punishment under a variety of laws and penalization is common, usually in the form of short-term detentions, interrogations, fines, legal harassment, and travel bans. Cuba’s new penal code, approved in May 2022, added “using social networks” to organize gatherings, meetings, or protests to the list of established crimes often used to target dissidents, like “disrespect,” “public disorder,” and “sedition.” Resolution 105, enacted in August 2021 following the July protests, outlines online offenses including the dissemination of “false news” and content defaming the country’s prestige. Decree Law 370, approved in 2019, prohibits the use of foreign servers to host vaguely defined “sites” and outlaws the spread of information against “the social interest, morals, good customs, and integrity of people,” through “public data transmission networks.” Using these repressive laws, officials could arrest or prosecute journalists who report on elections online, impeding access to information. Concerns about such arrests or legal liability could also drive people to self-censor reports on and discussions about the polls more generally. Authorities have increasingly targeted independent journalists, influencers, and online activists using these laws. In March 2022, for instance, protester Yoan de la Cruz was sentenced to six years in prison for live-streaming one of the early July 2021 antigovernment protests on Facebook, though he was released on appeal two months later. 

Cuba has a score of 14 out of 100, with 100 representing the least vulnerability in terms of election integrity, on Freedom House’s Election Vulnerability Index, which is based on a selection of key election-related indicators. The Cuba score reflects a tightly restricted political space where free expression is suppressed online and offline, and independent media and civil society face legal pressure from the government limiting their ability to criticize those in power. The country is rated Not Free in Freedom in the World 2022, with a score of 12 out of 100 with respect to its political rights and civil liberties, and Not Free in Freedom on the Net 2022, with an internet freedom score of 20 out of 100. To learn more about these annual Freedom House assessments, please visit the Cuba country reports in Freedom in the World and Freedom on the Net.